April 13, 2020 / Sarah Hansen, Forbes Staff
Topline: As President Donald Trump weighs “the biggest decision of [his] life” in determining when to reopen the U.S. economy and ease social distancing measures amid the coronavirus outbreak, the governments of Italy and Spain have taken tentative steps this week to send certain workers back to their jobs and allow some shops to reopen, an important indication that the world could begin to move past life under shutdown.
- In Spain, thousands of construction and factory workers returned to work this morning.
- The majority of the country is still under stringent lockdown measures, however, and schools and nonessential businesses like retail stores and restaurants are still closed; more than 17,000 people have died in Spain as a result of the virus.
- Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Sunday that the decision to restart certain parts of the economy was undertaken after consulting scientific experts, and that any further easing would depend the country’s progress in slowing the virus, according to the The Guardian; Sanchez’s political opponents have criticized the move as an “imprudence.”
- Italy, once the epicenter of the virus in Europe, will also gently ease some lockdown measures tomorrow and allow some shops to reopen; the majority of lockdown restrictions will remain in place until May 3, however, and factories will remain closed.
- Over the weekend, Italy saw its lowest number of new coronavirus deaths in three weeks.
- In the United States, comments by President Trump and Dr. Anthony Fauci over the weekend sparked renewed debate over when the U.S. should consider easing social distancing measures to reopen the economy; Trump had previously floated Easter as a target date, and officials in his administration are now pushing for the beginning of May.
- Experts disagreed: “I think it’s just too early for us to say whether May 1 is that date,” Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn said on ABC News’s “This Week.”
- “We could be pouring gas on the fire, even inadvertently,” said New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy in an interview with CNN on Sunday.
